


Frostbitten

by hopeassassin



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: AoTaka bromance gives me life, F/M, Fluff, college students au, generation of miracles - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-22 05:45:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10690962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeassassin/pseuds/hopeassassin
Summary: One measly moment of inattention, and she was sent flying gracelessly to land on her ass. The instant she slipped, a rather unbecoming shriek of surprise and horror tore from her throat. As she sat miserable and fuming in the pile of snow, she couldn’t help noticing the cackle coming from close by. AoMomo college students AU. One-shot, fluff-of-sorts.





	Frostbitten

**Author's Note:**

> Gift for Mmomoi, for being amazing, for kindling my love for this pairing and for making so many wonderful fics for them. You’re my lady and saviour, darling!
> 
> Written for the prompt: _Kiss in the cold_.

She exhaled deeply through her mouth as her vexation mounted.

Upon noticing that she could vaguely see her breath, thanks to the difference in temperatures between her lungs and the outside air, her annoyance piqued.

There was a multitude of things Momoi Satsuki disliked.

Cold spells in the beginning of October, though, were ranked pretty high on that list.

She disliked extremes in temperatures regardless whether they were rocketing or plummeting.

Extremely hot weather made her feel like hell had come on Earth, especially when she had no chance of staying in the bliss of her air conditioned home.

Extreme cold made her feel like her very soul would freeze in her body.

Neither of those extremes was pleasant in the least.

But she still disliked temperatures dropping by just a tiny margin.

After all, if it was hot out, she could go to the beach, or a swimming pool, or eat some ice-cream or drink refreshing drinks, and that would make things a bit better.

But when it was cold, no matter how well she dressed, how many layers of clothing she put between her sensitive skin and the biting air outside, she never felt warm enough, or comfortable enough.

So, needless to say, whenever temperatures started dropping, it was accompanied by a souring of Satsuki’s general disposition.

She huffed angrily to herself and burrowed her head into the tall collar of her coat. It barely did anything to make her feel any warmer. Or cosier, for that matter. But at the very least her collar-shield from the cold at her neck made her feel just a bit less moody.

Satsuki bounced a little at the balls of her feet, wondering just how long the bus was going to take to arrive.

She wanted to check her wristwatch, but doing so would mean she’d have to put her hand out in the cold, and roll up her sleeve to check the reading on it. Thus, she decided she’d rather not, choosing instead the slightly more irksome option of waiting for what felt like an eternity.

As she let her eyes wander around aimlessly, she noticed a guy.

Well, it would probably be more accurate to call him  _the_  guy, since he wasn’t just  _any_  guy.

She had noticed him since recently. He always waited on the same bus stop as her, for the same bus as she did. He always got off at the same stop, and continued down the same path to the same destination as hers.

She could only deduce after a while that he must be a student at the same university as she was, and that he probably lived somewhere nearby.

She hadn’t seen him during the first semester, but now that the weather had started getting chillier, she had noticed him waiting at the bus stop with her, frequently at the same hours.

And it wasn’t really supposed to be a very big of a deal. He was just some dude, waiting at the same place as her, right?

Well, true as that may be, the fact remained that he seemed a curious character to her.

It had been a couple of weeks since she’d noticed him. And she had to say—not once had she seen him with any other expression on his face other than the impartial, completely rid of emotion mask that he always wore.

A few times he had noticed her looking at him, and their eyes had met. That’s when she’d noticed how steely the azure colour of his eyes was. Upon being caught staring, she usually averted her gaze quickly, incriminating herself further.

Not that she cared, though. She had no idea who he was. So what if he was a student at the same university? She had never run into him on campus grounds.

Plus, if she cared what every random stranger thought about her, she wasn’t going to get very far in life, now was she?

Still, after seeing him several times at her bus stop, she couldn’t stop herself from giving him a thorough once-over. Or maybe a few. And every one of those had yielded pretty much the same results.

While he wasn’t particularly unappealing, the angles of his face were just a bit too sharp for her taste. His expression was always a bit too neutral, a bit too severe, for her liking.

His skin was dark and the build of his body tall and sturdy. He was impressive in height and just a bit intimidating with that deadpan look on his face. His brows were almost always either knitted or just narrowed over his eyes, giving his gaze a very piercing quality.

He made her uneasy, sometimes. When she let herself dwell on his presence. It wasn’t normal to always be wearing the same expression—at least not to her. So he kind of creeped her out.

Of course, she had to factor in that there wasn’t much to be jolly or mirthful about while waiting on your own at the bus stop for the damn bus to arrive. But still!

It was all those little things about him that she’d noted for the past few weeks that made him a character sometimes standing in the spotlight of her idle thoughts while waiting for the bus to arrive.

She turned her gaze to her wristwatch just in time to avoid being caught peering at his profile again. When she saw the time, she heaved a small sigh while putting her hands back into her coat’s pockets. The bus was due to arrive any minute now!

As she breathed softly through the coat’s collar and glared heatedly at the small puffs that came out, she didn’t notice the pair of eyes curiously studying her from the side.

* * *

By the beginning of November, the weather had gone completely crazy. She believed she hadn’t lived through a nastier year than this one.

It was only November, yet there were already snowstorms that made you want to forfeit your right to live, or at the very least relinquish all your responsibilities as a human being and just stay holed up in the comfort of your warm home.

However, there was no way she could just shirk her studies, so Satsuki grit her teeth and persevered.

Instead of being in her nice, warm apartment, here she was, waiting miserably at the bus stop while trying to will herself to ignore the throbbing pain in her fingers and toes—proof of her losing sensitivity in them from the cold.

As she arrived at the bus stop, she noticed him there, too.

She also couldn’t help but note with a shiver raking her spine that he was dressed entirely too lightly for the below-zero temperatures they were experiencing: he didn’t even have a hat, or a muffler – two items she never left home without anymore.

His jacket reached only till about his waist, when her coat covered perfectly the area from her lower jaw right down to below her knees.

And she was  _still_  freezing.

She couldn’t imagine what kind of thermoregulation his body had to have for him to feel perfectly fine with just that amount of clothing on, with the weather they were experiencing.

She shook her head in disbelief to herself as she breathed warm air into her bare hands.

Forgetting her mittens at home had been the biggest blunder she’d made all week. Now she’d have to endure the pain of her aching fingers from the cold through her travels around town for the whole day as punishment for her forgetfulness.

She sighed heavily into her cupped hands, wishing she was just a bit less sensitive to the cold or resistant to it – like that guy seemed to be.

Never had she felt more envious of a stranger than she did in those ten minutes they waited for the bus to arrive on that freezing November day.

* * *

By the middle of November, the weather situation had gone completely downhill by Satsuki’s standards.

First, some warmer days with clearer skies had come, melting the snow.

But afterwards, the mind-numbing cold came back, turning what had been water to ice. Then proceeding to snow over that as well.

That left Satsuki basically traipsing and skating her way to the bus stop, instead of walking the distance to it. Her boots were warm and cosy, but they weren’t very good at keeping her upright should she step on ice.

This was why she took great care to trudge carefully through the snowy lanes until she arrived at the stop.

She noticed that the navy-haired guy with the scandalously light winter-wear was there again. She resisted the urge of rolling her eyes while she shifted her weight from foot to foot in an attempt to keep herself moving and warm.

The more often she met him nowadays—practically every day of the week, actually—the odder she found it that she hadn’t seen him at all during the first semester.

To her, it looked like for the duration of the first four months, he didn’t give a flying fuck about university, and now suddenly he was the most diligent attendee there was. Who  _did_  that kind of stuff, really? It was fishy, no matter how you look at it.

If she wasn’t almost certain that he kind of hated her, she’d start worrying that he was a stalker or something. Since he was always there whenever she was waiting for the bus and whatnot.

Then again, if he was stalking her, he’d show at least a remote sense of interest in what she did—something that had never happened.

Although there was this one time a couple of weeks ago when he had looked like he wanted to say something to her. But she could’ve just imagined it, since he never breathed a word in the end.

What was going on with that bus, anyway? She was going to be late for class.

And it was a rather important class, too! The professor was going to explain how she expected her students to make their papers, which would pretty much determine the grades they’d receive at the end of the term. She couldn’t arrive late for  _that_.

Unwittingly, she started pacing back and forth as she waited for the blasted vehicle to arrive. But as she considered what could happen should she truly arrive after the professor to the auditorium, she didn’t notice the ice she had ventured close to before it was too late.

One measly moment of inattention, and she was sent flying gracelessly to land on her ass.

The instant she slipped, a rather unbecoming shriek of surprise and horror tore from her throat. As she sat miserable and fuming in the pile of snow, she couldn’t help noticing the cackle coming from close by.

Her head whipped in direction of its source. She discovered somewhat to her surprise that it was the tall dark-skinned stalker-wannabe who had been laughing at her.

He looked away quite quickly when she turned to him, though, with a rather unconvincing apology on his lips.

It occurred to her only fleetingly that this was the first time she had heard him speak, in any shape or form. Consequently, she disregarded that thought completely, in favour of more pressing ones.

Like, for example: how dare he laugh at her?! As if this wasn’t degrading enough that she’d fallen like she had in the first place. It had been  _years_  since she’d last fallen in winter, but of course she had to do it  _now_ , when he was around to  _mock_  her for it.

She seethed quietly to herself, dusting herself and her coat off from the snow.

She only wished she could shrug the disgrace off just like she could the filth off her jacket.

She saw him stepping aside to go who-cares-where-anyway, and she felt her blood boil some more.

Continued cold and even more continuous engagements during it had a tendency to make her a bit of a grouch. But situations like this were hardly easy to deal with regardless of the weather or her current state of mind.

Just as Satsuki was reaching her most creative point in torturing that guy in her mind, she felt someone stop right next to her. An item penetrated her peripheral vision and she turned her head a little to see what it was.

Her nearly-homicidal embarrassment-driven thoughts were brought to a screeching halt when she noticed it was the same guy, his hand holding a can of warm tea from the nearby vending machine.

From the way he was holding it out towards her, eyes demonstratively evasive, she could only deduce it was an offering.

The pink-haired girl looked up at him, a quizzical expression on her face as their gazes met.

“Peace offering,” he explained. “For laughing. I didn’t meant to—but if you could’ve seen your face then, I think you would’ve laughed too.”

The corners of his mouth turned up into a smirk that she may have been tempted to smack off his face, if it wasn’t for the can of tea he was extending towards her.

Speaking of which, she eyed the tea curiously. Huh. Peace offering, eh? As means of apology for laughing at her misery.  _Huh_.

She took the can tentatively from his grasp. She said a muffled thank you as she struggled with the opener.

She wrestled with it for a moment, then two, until she deduced to her dismay she’d have to take off her mitten.

As soon as she noticed how comforting the warmth of the tea in her bare hand was, she took off her other mitten as well, revelling in the feeling the warm liquid sliding down her throat, and how much more at ease she was once her fingers were no longer frozen stiff in the mittens.

A minute later, they got on the bus together without speaking another word to each other.

He sat pretty far from her and he didn’t spare another look her way, yet she couldn’t help sending him a curious glance. The smirk was wiped off his face before she could even appreciate it at all, and he was back to being his usual, impossible to impress self.

She’d had him pegged as something of a scary, standoffish guy from the vibe he was always giving off.

But after what happened that day, it was kind of hard to maintain that image of him.

Especially since he had picked her favourite type of tea to apologize with.

* * *

Ever after that fall, Satsuki’s impression of the guy started significantly improving.

He did help his case with the fact that whenever their eyes met after that day, he gave her a little nod of acknowledgement before continuing to mind his own business, away from her.

It was a miniscule detail, but it showed her that he wasn’t as aloof or highhanded as she’d believed.

She could also swear that a couple of times in the following week he looked like he really wanted to strike up a conversation with her. But since he never did, maybe she’d read his body language wrong. As the thought flitted across her mind, she was overcome by the overwhelming sense of déjà vu.

The next time he actually spoke to her was a little over a week after her humiliating incident.

It was yet another cold day from hell to Satsuki and, fed up with having her fingers freezing in her coat pockets, she procured her mittens from them. She gingerly put them on, relishing the feeling of warmth the wool brought with it.

However, in drowning in bliss, she failed to notice the item that fell out of her pocket and slid away from her, blown away by the slight breeze that had the power to numb minds with its coldness.

It didn’t slip the navy-haired guy’s notice, though, and he bent down to pick up what had fallen out of Satsuki’s pocket. He studied it curiously for a little, smirking to himself when he discovered it was her bus pass.

Satsuki noted his presence only once he came to a stop right next to her. She was rubbing her gloved hands against one another, trying to get the blood running in her digits again.

“Oh, hello,” she greeted good-naturedly with a nod at him. She turned her face towards the road again, believing this was yet another of their impromptu greet-then-pretend-the-other-isn’t-there moments.

She was a bit surprised when instead of moving away or sticking to the usual scenario, the tall guy kept standing next to her. This was a bit unusual, since he always gave her plenty of space whenever they were waiting for the bus together.

He was also playing with something, turning it over and over in his hand.

“Can I help?” she decided to ask after a while, peering up at his profile.

And as she did, she couldn’t help feeling a teasing tug in her tummy at the sight of his small smirk as he gazed down at her.

“I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure I can help you.” When her eyebrows scrunched up in surprise, he let out a little chuckle before he stopped playing with the item in his hand, handing it over to her. “Here, I believe this is yours. Since it fell out of your pocket and all.”

She took the proffered item and stared at it in horror when she realized what it was.

“It seems kind of important. You know, considering where we are.” He was barely containing his mischievous grin, and it was drenching his words in mirth.

She shook her head, dismayed at yet another mishap she was letting him witness.

“Thank you so much!” she said earnestly, pocketing her bus pass. She let out a sigh of exasperation with herself. “You’ve saved me once again.”

He chuckled, shoving his hands in his pockets, nonchalant.

“I wouldn’t call it that,” he tried to shy away from the reality of the situation, modest.

Satsuki shook her head at him again.

“I must be giving you the impression of a real trouble-magnet already,” she said, slightly disgruntled with the thought.

It helped that he dutifully looked surprised at her suggestion.

“What? Nah,” he tried to shrug it off. It was really kind of him that he did.

But she knew better.

“Well, I’m constantly doing stupid stuff when you’re around,” she grumbled, realizing the morose truth of her statement when it left her mouth. “Like falling on my ass, or dropping things. Like my bus pass. Or my dignity.”

His reaction was so sudden, so unexpected, that it almost had her jump.

He laughed.

The sound was so rich, so honest, so liberating, that it took her a moment to be able to shift her attention from how becoming his expression turned when he grinned like that, or how flattering it felt to have someone usually so listless laugh so earnestly, at something she hadn’t even intended to have him this amused.

He composed himself too quickly for her liking—when she caught this thought flashing through her mind, she slapped herself mentally for being so fickle; she’d literally gone from vaguely disliking him, through somewhat respecting him, to acting like some besotted school-girl in the mere span of several days.

She blamed the brilliance of that smile of his for her temporary insanity. It was no fault of her own!

“When you put it like that, it’s hard to come up with a decent reply,” he told her, the corner of his mouth still curled up.

She caught herself mirroring the expression unintentionally.

“Yes, when I put it like that, it  _does_  sound like I’m a disaster,” she supplied mock-helpfully, with a sardonic look on her face.

He chuckled again, but it was not the same enrapturing guffaw from earlier, and she found the fact she felt a little pang of disappointment entirely inappropriate.

“I didn’t say that. I don’t think so either.”

Her sceptical expression made his smirk widen. It adopted a hint of smugness, too.

“But maybe it’s just that you enjoy the ‘damsel in distress’ position, looking for a rescuer?” he suggested cheekily, earning him an incredulous look.

“Oh,  _please_. If you’re really hoping to find a three-dimensional woman who’s like that, life isn’t going to be easy for you, buddy” she informed him matter-of-factly.

Her words made him laugh to himself again, shaking his shock of navy spikes in amusement as he faced away from her.

The smile was still on his face, compelling her to maintain the conversation at all costs.

“Although, I guess ceremonious thanks are in order. Seeing as how you’re my bus pass’s saviour and all,” she allowed, earning her another one of those rich, fulfilling laughs from him.

“I am but a lowly servant, ever working in the lady’s favour,” her companion joked, giving her a mock little curtsy.

She giggled at his antics.

“All jokes aside, though, I really would’ve lost this if it weren’t for you. Thank you, uh…” she paused, realizing that for all the stolen glances and polite nods they’d sent each other for the past month or so, she’d never caught his name.

He peered curiously at her when she halted mid-sentence, blinking his confusion at her. His mind seemed to catch up to what she meant to say when he saw the look on her face, though.

“Daiki,” he supplied with a smooth smirk. “Aomine Daiki.”

The smile that stretched her lips was genuine and easy in response.

“Momoi Satsuki,” she introduced herself as well, taking hold of the hand he offered her.

Daiki shook her hand, his hold firm, steadfast, as he did so.

“Pleased to meet you,” he said conversationally. His smile turned impish, and he added as an afterthought, “Officially, at last.”

It was her turn to laugh. Yes, he did have a point there. They’d spent so much time in one another’s company, never uttering a word to the other. There certainly was an air of ‘Oh,  _finally_ ’ about this formal introduction of theirs.

“You’re right. I apologize for my tactlessness,” she lamented politely, shaking her head in disapproval at herself, missing the twinkle in his eye. “My mind tends to work a bit slower in the winter season.”

Daiki shifted his weight to his other foot, a secretive expression stealing across his face.

“I’ve noticed you don’t seem too fond of the cold,” he mentioned in passing, his gaze shifting away from Satsuki.

His nonchalant observation, however, made her heart jump embarrassingly, her pulse quickening.

She couldn’t help her reaction, because she had never had people so flawlessly guessing at her character, spot-on, from simple, miniscule signals she’d given off without realizing.

She had never had anyone noticing her—least of all people she’d had an eye on as well.

There was something strangely elating in having him make such impeccable guesses at her likes and preferences from things he’d gathered during their silent exchanges.

“No one in their right mind can be fond of the cold!” she defended weakly, trying to distract him from the somewhat awkward silence she had lapsed into after his last comment.

Daiki smirked as he looked down the road.

“Seems like you other saviour is here just in time, then.”

“Huh?” she retorted intelligently, feeling like she had completely lost track of the conversation.

She raised her gaze just in time to see the bus skid to a stop in front of them.

“Ah, yes, my metallic saviour. Ever the reliable knight,” she joked half-heartedly as they climbed aboard.

“I learn from the best,” he jested airily, getting on after her.

She didn’t overanalyse the fact she didn’t think twice before plopping down into the window seat, so as to leave him room to sit down next to her.

She didn’t mind how naturally it came to him to take that very seat she’d intended for him, all the while continuing their nonchalant conversation.

She did notice, though, how easy it was for her to talk to him. How naturally conversing with him came to her.

There was something about him—His disposition? His expression? His body language? She didn’t know—that made it feel so natural for her to talk to him, like she could tell him anything, without second-guessing if she should, or how he’d take it.

It was the first time she’d spoken to him, the first time she actually had a normal conversation with him, and yet from the ease with which she could respond, one would almost assume they had known each other for years.

She was forced out of the pleasant trance chatting with him lulled her into when she realized that it was time for them to part—she had a class to attend in one wing of the university, and he had his own in another.

Only once she was out of her daze did she recognize the fact the usually long, tedious journey to university had become so short-lived and invigorating in light of how engrossed she’d become in her exchange with Daiki.

The stab of disappointment when they needed to part ways at the entrance of the large building was so prominent she couldn’t even bother feeling repentant for experiencing it.

* * *

It was funny, really. How such a small detail made such a huge difference.

In the days after their first exchange, she found her eyes always scanning the bus stop— _their_ bus stop—in search for him.

Most days, he was there, his back to her as he waited for the public transport, hands in his jacket pockets, his winter-wear entirely insufficient by her standards as always.

It was funny, because whenever her eyes rested on his back, her day already seemed better, despite the negative temperature readings and the abominable snow piles she had to plough her way through to get there.

* * *

November was almost coming to an end. The days were growing ever shorter, the sun coming up later and setting earlier.

The whole combination of that and the dreadful weather made for Satsuki having a very fierce internal battle with herself on the matter of should she ditch school or not one particularly horrible day at the end of November.

She was supposed to have some early morning classes. She’d set her alarm the previous day, dutifully getting up and brushing her teeth while still half-asleep in the bathroom. However, it was only after she passed by the window on her journey back from the bath that she noticed it was hailing outside.

Her fingers clenched around the mug she was drinking her coffee from, her eye twitching spastically. Her mind had felt sluggish no less than a few seconds ago, yet now it was kick-started to full attentiveness with a thousand thoughts running through her head.

Should she ditch or shouldn’t she? What would be the repercussions should she ditch? Could her record handle it? Probably. She doubted she’d miss anything too important just for skipping one day. Right?

She exhaled dramatically while she put on her boots, zipping them up sullenly. She swore sometimes her parents had done too good a job at raising her into a goody-two-shoes, making it impossible for her to miss even a  _day_  of university without feeling excruciatingly guilty.

By the time she got to the bus stop, the storm eased into silent but generous snowing. When she reached her destination, though, she was greeted by a sight she didn’t expect.

During some of their previous talks, Daiki had mentioned that he wasn’t a very big fan of their university. He’d never been good at dealing with school to begin with, so taking a responsible stance with his education now was next to impossible for him.

This was why on this revoltingly early, snowy day the last person she expected to see on the stop was Daiki.

And yet, there he was, his back facing her, shoulders slumped, back hunched, his hands in his jacket pockets like always.

Her lips parted behind her scarf, her surprise taking free reign over her.

“How unexpected,” she commented absentmindedly, coming to a stop next to the tall boy.

Her voice seemed to pull him out of some kind of a reverie—either that, or he had been sleeping while standing; both were equally plausible explanations—causing him to turn towards her. His usually sharp cobalt eyes were now bleary, half-lidded.

“Oh, Satsuki, yo.”

The first time he had used such an overly-familiar form of address with her, with just her given name without any honorific, she’d blushed a bright red, almost tripping, gracelessly, over her subsequent words.

Somehow, though, she wasn’t uncomfortable with him assuming such a stance of familiarity with her—which was odd in itself, because he was still practically a stranger to her.

Fancy how that worked, right?

Now, having him act so friendly with her felt like second nature to her. She didn’t blush or stammer anymore.

“Good morning, Daiki,” she greeted him with a knowing smile.

She looked up at his profile just in time to see him yawn widely without bothering to put a hand to his mouth as etiquette demanded. She giggled, burrowing her chin deeper in her scarf.

“Mornin’,” he echoed hollowly, glaring at the road in front of them.

He blinked slowly, as though keeping his lids open was an incredible feat of strength both physical and mental. She giggled again.

“How unusual for you to be up so early,” she commented coyly, but the corners of her mouth were traitorously curling upwards. “And on  _such_  a lovely day, too,” she added sarcastically with a curt tilt of her head towards the perpetually falling snow. “Never would’ve pegged you for the painfully devoted to his studies type.”

Daiki snorted, rolling his eyes at the ridiculousness of her commentary.

“I wish it was classes I had now. If I did, I could just sleep right through this nightmare,” he drawled, kicking away the snow that was piling upon his shoes in his immobility.

Satsuki took a curious peak at him, pursing her lips in nonplus.

“You’re not going to uni?” she questioned.

“I am,” Daiki confirmed lazily, yawning again. Tears pricked in the corners of his eyes from all his lion-like yawns.

“You’re going to uni, but not to class?” Satsuki clarified, the very statement sounding like utter nonsense in her ears.

What else was there to do in university except classes? She had no clue what he was on about.

Maybe he was sleep-walking?

“Yup,” he confirmed, stifling another yawn. When he noticed her ‘Are you mad?’ grimace, he chuckled. “I’m going to practice. Coach and captain will kill me if I don’t show.”

Her brows shot up. He lost her completely with that last one.

What was even more confusing was that her puzzlement seemed to baffle him in turn. And with that she officially had no clue what was even going on anymore, making her wonder if she wasn’t sleep-walking herself.

“I’m on the university’s basketball team?” he tried again, in way of an explanation. There was an amused little smile on his lips.

Understanding dawned on her face, and that seemed to disperse some of the disbelief in his expression.

“You never mentioned that before,” she noted pointedly, turning her nose up at him haughtily. She wasn’t a mind-reader; he had to actually  _say_  these things for her to understand, right?

Her comment served to make him laugh again.

“It never came up, I guess,” he attempted to remedy weakly.

She wasn’t really buying it, but it was too early and too snowy for her to nit-pick on the things he said.

It was a miracle in itself that he was even there at the stop with her to begin with. So she ought to be a bit more grateful.

Satsuki hummed thoughtfully in the back of her throat, outright staring at her companion then. Daiki quirked a brow at her, giving her incentive to speak her mind.

“You’re unexpectedly diligent when it comes to your club, huh?” she surmised at last.

He shrugged, trying to play it off nonchalant, but she could see the smug smirk he was barely suppressing.

“Kind of,” he admitted. “It’s something of a must for the ace of a team to be invested in the sport and all.”

Her mouth opened to form a small o.

“Isn’t the ace supposed to be the best or something?” Satsuki didn’t get much about sports, since there were none that particularly interested her, but she did have some common knowledge.

Shabby though it was at best.

Her query caused the complacent grin to spread freely across Daiki’s face.

“Yeah, pretty much.”

The wind howled, carrying the snow in its merciless currents. Satsuki listened to the sounds of winter around them while she wrapped her mind around what he was trying to tell her.

Her lips twisted in a playful smirk, drenched in doubt.

“You’re pulling my leg,” she ventured a guess. Her words made Daiki grin some more.

“I promise, I’m not,” he assured her.

His tone sounded earnest enough.

“You’re really that good?” she reiterated, for confirmation.

“Yep,” he confirmed, immodest. Her brow wrinkled at that.

“Then the level of the team must be pretty low, right? So you outshine them easily,” she guessed again.

He laughed again, in that rich, unfairly exciting way only he could.

“You sure pull no punches,” he said, his tone largely amused.

His observation made her realize just how rude she had been with what she’d been saying. She put a hand to her mouth, an apology on her lips, but before he could hear her out, he snickered again, waving her off.

“That’s all right, it’s my own fault for giving you such an impression in the first place.” He gave her his most award-winning smirk, and she couldn’t help but notice that he seemed a lot more awake than when she’d first arrived. The thought brought a smile to her face as well. “Still, I’ll have you know, since you seem not to—our university’s team is kind of amazing.”

She blinked cutely with her wide, innocent eyes, stunned into silence for a brief moment.

“Really?”

He nodded.

“We’ve won several trophies already. The starters are really talented, and the team is pretty big.” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, a cocky look stealing across his face. “We’re pretty famous on campus. Makes me wonder how you never heard of us or our games.”

Satsuki shrugged after they got on the bus, their temporary sanctuary from the snow attempting to bury them alive outside.

“I guess I do live under a rock when it comes to hypes circulating around campus,” she allowed with a disinterested expression. It morphed into a dreamy smile. “You, the star player of a super-strong basketball team, huh? Kind of hard to imagine.”

His smirk widened at her veiled challenge. He rested his back in his seat.

“Come with me to practice, then. It will be easier to believe if you see it yourself, right?”

If he was being so confident about this thing, it was safe to assume that he wasn’t bluffing, right?

And, besides, why was it so important for her to accept his word about this? Was he trying to impress her or something?

She banished the thought before it could make her heart skip any more beats.

“As long as it doesn’t coincide with any of my classes, I suppose I could,” she mused aloud, tapping an index finger against her cheek.

Daiki gave her a contemplative hum.

“We should coordinate for a time that’s convenient for you. We’re at practice every day nowadays because of the tournament coming up, so there will be plenty of opportunity for you to drop by,” he told her while fishing his phone out of his jeans’ pocket.

Satsuki stared vacantly at him as he did so, not following his line of thought in the least.

“Thanks,” she mumbled, still eyeing him curiously as he shot her an expectant glance, phone in his hand. “What’s…” she trailed off, gesturing at whatever he was doing.

Daiki chuckled at her expense again, head shaking in dismay. Here he thought he had been the more inadequate one, in this unholy early hour.

“To coordinate?” he prompted, making understanding shine in her eyes at last.

He wiped the grin from his face while she searched her pockets for her own phone—he didn’t want her to reconsider giving him her number before he could have it in his contact book.

They exchanged numbers and addresses with the infrared, and once he had hers, his fingers quickly flew over the buttons.

‘Satsuki’ looked at her from his phone screen.

Seeing it made something warm and tight coil teasingly in her gut. She shifted her gaze away, self-conscious, as she put his number down in her phone book as ‘Aomine, Daiki’.

She grappled for something else to say, to distract herself from the fact that this was the first time in a long while she had given her phone number to someone outside of her immediate family and friend circle.

“Won’t your teammates mind, though?” she thought to ask, suddenly concerned.

Daiki looked up after he’d put the phone back in his pocket.

“What? Those guys? No way,” he said, shrugging the matter off quickly. He did it so quickly he failed to convince her.

“Even if you’ve invited me there, I would hate to impose on your friends,” she told him seriously, her face painted with worry.

Seeing her expression, Daiki sighed in defeat.

“Fine, fine, I’ll ask the morons if they mind, if that would make you feel better,” he drawled, rolling his eyes.

Satsuki’s face bloomed into an easy, beautiful smile.

“Yes, it would be great if you did.” She felt a sense of satisfaction, and an odd sense of accomplishment for getting him to agree to her— _sensible_ —terms, despite his reluctance.

They got off the bus soon after, with him sending her off with a small wave and a yawn, making her promise she’d come visit as soon as she could since she’d already made him look forward to it.

She laughed, waving back to him and giving him her word as she trudged off in direction of her morning class. She walked, her spirit greatly lifted in comparison to how she’d felt at the start of the day.

It was during her trek towards the auditorium that she realized she had given him her phone number and email address under the most convincing pretext, and she had done so without batting an eye.

She blushed bright red, putting a hand to her face to hide—from whom? There was no one around, and she couldn’t very well hide from herself; still, she hid.

She felt her skin burn under the sensitive flesh on the back of her hand, and she knew he had one upped her this time.

* * *

The following day, she was the solitary person waiting at the bus stop.

She secretly lamented not getting to see him that morning, but her luck changed when she met him on the way to the cafeteria.

Satsuki and her friends had decided to have lunch in the canteen. That was why they were walking in its direction, when the pink-haired girl saw him for the first time on campus.

There was Daiki, clad only in his overly thin for the season t-shirt and slacks, accompanied by another monstrously tall bespectacled boy with hair the colour of lush grass.

Her dark-skinned friend noticed her from afar, visibly perking up. He disregarded whatever conversation he’d been having with his companion, opting instead to greet Satsuki heartily.

“Fancy seeing you here, Satsuki,” he started conversationally, once they were close enough for small talk.

She stopped briefly, aware of her friends waiting for her a pace or two further away, giving them space.

“I can say the same to you.” She giggled when she realized that, “This is actually the first time I see you inside the building.”

Her navy-haired friend snickered unapologetically, his eyes slanted mischievously.

“Going for lunch?” he supposed, throwing a look over his shoulder at the girls clustered behind him.

Satsuki nodded.

“You too?” she guessed, almost hopeful.

“We’re just back from lunch,” Daiki told her easily, and she almost convinced herself that the swell in her chest was  _not_  due to disappointment. “Midorima here insisted we eat in the cafeteria for once, because his lucky item today was who-cares-what.”

The emerald-eyed boy behind Daiki scoffed demonstratively at his companion’s words.

“It was a cafeteria spoon, and you need to let this go already. What a small-minded man you are, Aomine,” he admonished with his deep baritone, his voice and gaze severe.

Satsuki blinked, flabbergasted, when the expression on Daiki’s face became pure ice when he regarded his counterpart.

“Big words coming from the guy who didn’t want to eat alone, and found no one else to pester with his stupid requests,” the tanned male shot back, his brows narrowing dangerously.

The green-haired guy didn’t seem to heed the warning signs, pushing his glasses up on the bridge of his nose with a huff, poised for rebuttal.

“It’s not my fault everyone else has boxed lunches. Or that your mother can’t be arsed to make you any.”

When Daiki’s expression became stormy, Satsuki started feeling distinctly uncomfortable. Both because she had a feeling she was witnessing something she shouldn’t, and because it felt like the temperature between these two had dropped so far it gave her frostbite, all in the span of just a few exchanged sentences.

“Maybe arguing for twenty minutes with that canteen lady on why she should give you that spoon is someone else’s fault as well, huh?”

The pink-haired girl lifted a placating hand, her mouth opening but no words making it outside. She had no idea what she  _could_  say to stop them from fighting, but she got a distinct feeling they needed to be reminded they ought to get along better than this.

“You’re being unreasonable, and you’re making a scene.” Midorima pushed the glasses further up along the bridge of his nose. “You’re making your friend here uncomfortable.”

His comment made cold sweat roll down the back of Satsuki’s neck. Suddenly being brought into this verbal cold war was not where she wanted to be at all.

Daiki simply clicked his tongue, obviously used to his companion’s antics.

“Now  _I_ ’m the one making a scene?!” His tone was incredulous, but he gave up the argument before things could escalate any further. “That’s why tsundere bastards like you are the most annoying species on the planet.”

Daiki proceeded to ignore Midorima’s indignant squawk, demanding explanation for his remark. A pair of azure orbs settled upon her face, the ice and animosity in them melting so quickly one would believe that the exchange that just transpired had just been a bad dream.

“Don’t mind him—he’s just impossible to tolerate like that. You get used to his nonsense over time,” he told Satsuki conversationally. He proceeded to pretend to be oblivious to mounting ire of the guy behind him.

Magenta eyes shifted from one of them to the other nervously, struggling to come up with what she should say to make this any better. Daiki noticed, laughing it off.

“We’re fine, don’t worry, Satsuki,” he patted her head patronizingly. He sidestepped her, taking a stride in the direction he and Midorima were headed in before running into her. “Well, we should go back to practice, or Akashi will have both our heads. Have a nice lunch.”

“Thanks, you take care.” She bid them goodbye with a wavering smile, wondering if they would be all right if left alone to their own devices.

The hand she had waved at them with was already by her side again when her friends grabbed hold of her shoulders. That’s when she noticed the almost manic look in their faces.

“W-what is it?” she asked shakily, wondering what she’d done this time.

“Momoi-chan, you know Aomine-kun?” the girl whose hands were on Satsuki’s shoulders demanded.

“I… guess?” the pink-haired female said cautiously, unsure if this was the right answer.

When the girls shared a pointed look amongst themselves, she figured her answer was most probably the  _wrong_  one.

“Are you guys close?” another one piped up from Satsuki’s side.

“He called your name, didn’t he?” a third one stressed, the tension in her voice loud and clear.

“Which means you must be pretty close, right?” the one still holding her shoulders queried, her grasp on her arms tightening in her—what? Satsuki couldn’t place the urgency in all of her friends’ faces.

And why were they acting like fanatics all of a sudden? This was the first time she saw them like this.

“What’s this about?” She couldn’t help wondering aloud, a worried look stealing across her face at the strained faces peering into hers.

Her question seemed to break them out of their trance, because the girl holding her shoulders released her with an apology on her lips.

“Sorry for being weird,” the one to her left had the decency to say. “It’s just that… it’s  _Aomine-kun_ , you know.”

“What about him?” Satsuki couldn’t understand. This whole cafeteria trip was making less and less sense to her.

The girls shared an incredulous look between each other before shifting their eyes upon her again.

“Satsuki-chan, you don’t know about Aomine-kun?”

She shrugged.

“What’s there to know?”

The pink-haired girl really believed the gasp of surprise one of her friends made upon her response was unnecessary. Not to mention overly dramatic.

“Aomine-kun is the ace of our basketball team, you know.”

“Ah, he did mention something like that once,” Satsuki admitted with a pensive nod. Her reaction must have been deemed unsatisfactory by her peers because they pressed on.

“Our team is really good, you know.”

“Yeah, he said that, too.”

“They won the national competition for young adolescents in the men’s league, you know!” A more persistent girl pointed out.

This did surprise Satsuki, shaking her out of her unimpressionable state.

“Wha—National? Really?” She honestly couldn’t believe it. Was Daiki really the ace of a team so awesome?

“Yes! The team was already good, but the guys who joined this year are even better.”

“They’re like a group of celebrities on campus,” another one of the girls spoke over the other, making it harder for Satsuki to follow their train of thought.

“They’re called the Generation of Miracles!”

“And they’re all super talented!”

“And Aomine-kun is their ace!”

The girls gave a dreamy sigh, whisked into a world of their own for a moment. It gave Satsuki the opportunity to wonder just who the guy she waited at the bus stop for the university bus was.

“Aomine-kun, you know,” the girl who had her by the shoulders started again. “He’s the fastest on court. He plays nothing like the other guys, and no team’s defence can stop him.”

“They call him the unstoppable scorer,” another one interjected, a wistful twinkle in her eye.

Satsuki blinked, surprised, a thoughtful hum in the back of her throat.

Was Daiki really  _that_  awe-inspiring on court? After all, she’d never seen her friends this caught up in sports-related talk, and yet here they were: speaking animatedly, one over the other, about what this guy could do when he played.

They were his die-hard fans, without a shadow of doubt.

Following that train of thought made her realize that the guy he’d had that heated argument with must have been his teammate. She briefly wondered if he had a nickname like her friend did.

For the remainder of the day, and for the following week, Satsuki was dragged into her girls’ heated discussions about Daiki and the Generation of Miracles, under the pretext that it was inexcusable for her to know nothing about the stars of their university.

* * *

By the end of the first week of December, Satsuki had been brought completely up to date.

In fact, she knew more about university basketball than she absolutely needed to. Trust her friends to go off on tangents when something caught their fancy.

She was nibbling on a sweet bun while standing next to the large window in front of her auditorium, a wistful look on her face as she stared off into the distance.

“Yo, Satsuki,” a familiar voice greeted her, pulling her out of her reverie.

She shifted her eyes upon the source of the greeting, her lips stretching into an automatic smile.

Daiki was headed in her direction, from across the hallway. There was a basketball spinning atop his outstretched index finger, its movement perpetuated by his other hand giving it a nudge whenever it slowed down.

“Oh, Aomine-kun, hello!” she greeted him in return, her expression brilliant.

And yet, instead of responding to her good-natured call, Daiki’s eyes narrowed. She tilted her head to the side, nonplussed.

“What is it?”

“What’s with that?” Daiki all but snapped at her, coming to a stop in front of her. His gaze was sharp, his tone imperative.

His demeanour gave her pause. There was something inherently menacing about a guy towering more than thirty centimetres over you glowering down at you.

“What’s with what?” she questioned cautiously, uncertain what part of her short response—or maybe her expression?—had displeased him.

“The weird address,” he scoffed, catching the ball that was spinning on his finger. “Where’d it come from?”

Realization dawned on her face at once.

“Oh. It’s what everyone calls you, so I ended up picking it up, too,” she explained sheepishly, putting a hand behind her head.

Daiki continued staring relentlessly at her, with that same stony expression on his face.

“Who’s everyone?” he asked, truly lost, but still filled with obvious disapproval and distaste.

Her mouth dropped ajar slightly as she shifted to peer into his intense azure eyes.

A thought finally registered with her: where other people got touchy at being referred to in overly familiar ways, Daiki got offended by sudden distancing.

She schooled her features into a polite look as best as she could, considering how loudly her heart was ramming against her ribcage all of a sudden. Her reactions made no sense sometimes, and this one in particular she honestly couldn’t reason.

“N-never mind that!” she stuttered, smacking herself mentally for the lapse. “My assignment deadlines are finally past, so if the offer for visiting you guys’ practices is still available, I’d love to drop by sometime.”

Her words achieved their purpose – the placating effect was immediate. The hard look slipped off his face, letting his features bloom into an excited grin.

“Really? Cool!” He was showing her rows of pearly teeth as he beamed at her. “We’re having a lot of practice matches nowadays, starters versus benchwarmers, you should come by to see one of them. You’ll see our team’s true strength then!”

Little did he know in the time they hadn’t run into each other, Satsuki had heard much more about said team than she could divulge in conversation with him.

She giggled, expertly masking the nervous note in her voice as she did so.

“I’m looking forward to it.”

After they parted—with Daiki continuing on for class, for once—Satsuki went on to wonder: would those guys really put on a show of skill that would live up to all the great expectations her friends instilled in her?

It really was hard to imagine that happening.

* * *

It had been hard, but it did happen.

Her expectations of their impressiveness being lived up to.

No, it was more accurate to say that they had surpassed them, even.

Satsuki had to resist more often than she was comfortable admitting to the urge to pinch herself to assure her she was still awake.

After all, the way these perfectly normal-looking boys before the whistle blew for the start of the match transformed to these speeding demons on court was just…  _Wow_.  _Really?_

They all had traits that made them stand-out. For example, the one called Midorima Satsuki had met could score from halfway across the court. What the hell was  _that_?

There was a blond, extremely eye-catching one—she was pretty sure she’d seen his face attractively smiling at her from covers of magazines—who kept utilizing moves someone else had used on court just before him. He seemed to have a miscreant streak, using people’s plays against them.

There was the dude with the purple hair and hunched shoulders. He certainly looked like he didn’t want to be playing at all. So she figured he was probably chosen simply for his incredibly height. That’s what she thought until she saw him in action, running at speeds that should’ve been impossible for someone with his body bulk.

Then there was the redhead, whose mere presence on court was menacing and oppressing. Out of all the boys, this one was probably the most worrisome to Satsuki. In fact, just regarding him made cold sweat break out on her temples, so she decided it would be best to avoid him.

Daiki, though.

Seeing him ( _finally_ ) play made her understand why her friends had shifted into manic mode when they’d seen her talk to him so chummy. All the other guys were pretty fast and capable, but somehow even among them, the navy-haired power forward stood out.

Not only was he mind-bogglingly fast—he could scale the entire length of the court in a heartbeat—but his agility was out of this world, too. His bursts of speed were perfectly controlled. His hands were deft while in contact with the ball, defending with crafty plays against anyone who attempted to steal it from him.

What caught her attention the most was the way he shot at the goal.

Every time she felt like he was merely tossing the ball in the general direction of the hoop just to shake off the guys marking him, it always,  _always_  went in.

He could do it while he was jumping back from a particularly speedy assault, he could do it while he was mid-jump, he could do it while he was behind the goal…!

Was this kind of basketball even real? She had never really paid much attention to sport before, but she was quite certain this kind of accuracy was unheard of.

Almost  _all_  the other players missed at least sometimes.

Well, except for the green-haired one. He never missed either.

But the only other person with a hundred percent successful shooting rate was Daiki.

What was more, when he’d said the match was ‘starters versus bench warmers’, Satsuki fully expected a team so talented to be overwhelming thoroughly their opponents.

Yet the ones he’d almost condescendingly labelled ‘bench warmers’ were putting up quite the fight against the Generation of Miracles. She deduced they must be the veterans who had brought victory to their university’s team in the past two years at the nationals.

Still, even against those amazing veteran players, the miracles pulled off a truly miraculous win.

“Good work,” Satsuki said cheerily to Daiki when he collapsed on the bench next to her. “You weren’t lying about this being a really outstanding team.”

The azure-eyed guy grinned wolfishly, his hands continuing to dry his hair, neck and face with the towel he’d procured from his duffel bag.

“Told you,” he all but chirped merrily. He heaved a sigh once he felt he’d dried himself well off enough. “These guys are something else. You should see them play when there’s something at stake. They get even better.”

Satsuki doubted how that was even physically possible, but she knew better now than to doubt Daiki’s statements about this team.

So instead of contending his statement, she merely nodded numbly, suddenly overcome with the desire she could see them in action, in a stadium full of a cheering crowd.

“You really do give your all in there, though. I could hardly believe my eyes that the sluggish, lazy guy I’ve been walking to the university with is the same guy as the one zooming on the court,” she joked lightly, nudging him in the side.

Daiki gave her a throaty laugh at that, and suppressing the grin that seized her features in response was impossible.

“What can I say? I love surprising and scandalizing,” he confessed unrepentantly.

He chugged down generous gulps of water from the bottle he procured from his bag. His lips unlatched from the bottle with a hefty sigh, and she pretended she hadn’t been mesmerized with looking at the way he licked at his fuller lower lip when he was done.

“What’s this, what’s this?” a raven-haired guy said in an almost sing-song voice as he approached them. “Dai-chan, you have a visitor?”

Satsuki attempted to withhold the laugh that bubbled on her lips in response to the pet name. She really did. But she couldn’t help the snort that escaped her regardless of her efforts.

Daiki pretended not to have heard her, focusing on the newcomer instead.

“She didn’t believe me when I said I was the ace. That kind of wrong needs to be corrected, you know, Kazu?”

The addressed boy hummed, a sly grin beginning to sprawl on his face.

“Ohh, she didn’t know, so you decided you should enlighten her? How commendable, Dai-chan. Our ace is the best!” he cheered. Yet Satsuki couldn’t place the slightly mocking note in his tone. She couldn’t, until he continued, that was. “Are you sure you didn’t just want to impress her, though? Since Dai-chan’s only redeeming features are his skills on court.”

Several things happened in a very short time-frame after this. An almost constipated look flitted across Daiki’s face, and something that could perhaps be a blush (she wasn’t entirely sure because of the darkness of his countenance). He grabbed hold of the smaller guy, his grip on the raven-haired boy vice-like as he promised him pain as payment for his earlier comment.

His captive wailed theatrically, hands flailing towards the green-haired boy Satsuki knew from their last encounter.

“Shin-chan! Save me! Dai-chan’s trying to kill me for calling out on his bullshit!”

His audacious claim only made Daiki’s hold tighten warningly.

Midorima looked impassively at the two idiots, sighing deeply as he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with two fingers.

“Don’t talk to me when you’re being so stupid. Your idiocy might be contagious, Takao,” was the emerald-eyed man’s reply to his call for help. His voice was as cool as ice.

The brunette let out a squawk of despair, hurt by his friend’s comment.

“My Ace has deserted me! Woe is me! This world is no longer worth living in if Shin-chan doesn’t want me!” Takao went demonstratively limp in Daiki’s hold, making the latter curse loudly at him while taking care not to fall over under the added weight in his arms’ hold.

“Your ace now is  _me_ , you bastard,” the cobalt-headed youth spat at the other, shaking him roughly. His head then whipped in direction of Satsuki, whose back straightened at being regarded again. “You see,  _this_  is the problem.”

He grabbed hold of Takao’s face, squeezing his cheeks in his hold and turning his face forcefully for Satsuki to see. The grimace that made the raven-haired boy adopt was so amusing the girl barely managed to stifle her giggles.

“Hey,” Takao protested weakly, his words muffled from Daiki’s grip on his face.

“ _This_  guy is our pass specialist. He’s  _supposed_  to be surveying the situation, and passing the ball to whichever one of us has a better chance at scoring in that moment. But  _instead_ , what does he do?” Satsuki shook her head, not having clue—of course she didn’t, she’d never seen them play. “He always finds ways to pass the ball to the three pointer freak show!”

Daiki pointed an accusatory finger at Midorima. A vein of annoyance pulsed into visibility on the latter’s forehead at the statement he heard in regards to himself.

“Kazu, we’re  _one team_  now, dude.” He gave the boy in his hold a rough shake. Satsuki giggled openly this time, feeling a bit guilty for it because she was almost sure the black haired boy’s head had rattled. “You’re supposed to pass to the rest of us, too. Not just to your old ace. This is favouritism!”

Takao grinned slyly, shrugging his shoulders in a devil-may-care manner.

“Dai-chan, you can get the ball on your own if you so wanted to have it,” he reasoned nonsensically. “Whereas Ace-sama and I have been a team for  _years_. There’s no way I’d be able to switch allegiance so quick when you just snap your fingers.”

His voice was almost whiny in its whimsicalness, making Daiki’s eyes roll in exasperation.

Before he could continue his interrogation, though, Midorima loomed over the two boys still engaged in a rather ridiculous hold.

The twitch in the corner of his eye warned the boys that they were not in the shooter’s good books at the moment.

“What was that, Takao? Did you just say that Aomine can get the ball on his own, but I need  _you_  to pass it to me if I want to have it?”

The way the bespectacled boy relocated the glasses further up his nose made his knuckles crack.

Satsuki wondered how that was even physically possible while she marvelled at the speed with which both Daiki and Takao scrambled to get away from one another, backs straightening to attention.

While Midorima’s wrath was focused on the onyx-haired male, the ace took it as his chance to slink away from the mess, sitting quietly on the other side of Satsuki.

She peered at him curiously, mirth clearly written across her face as Daiki did his best to remain inconspicuous next to her.

“What’s this? The almighty Dai-chan, cowed by the wrath of the shooting guard?” she taunted, her grin wide and brilliant.

Daiki scoffed at the assumption, but still doing his best to remain as unnoticeable as a guy almost two meters tall could be.

“No such thing! I just don’t feel like dealing with either of them right now.” He huffed haughtily, pretending to be disinterested with the exchange, when a pair of heads reared towards him again without his notice.

“This is all fine and dandy until you figure out that Dai-chan was just trying to change the subject from the fact he brought his crush here to impress her,” Takao sing-sung, his grin widening when Daiki choked on the water he was drinking.

The power forward sputtered, trying his best to keep a straight face after having spat out a fountain when he’d attempted to drink earlier. He wasn’t at all oblivious to the colour that had risen to Satsuki’s cheeks as well at the insinuation.

“I did not do any such thing!” he all but shouted, gathering the attention of the rest of the team a few paces away from them.

And throughout the rest of their bickering amongst themselves, Satsuki couldn’t help but notice.

He vehemently revolted against assumptions that he’d asked her over to impress her.

He never denied having a crush on her.

The thought was enough to make her stomach tie in knots of exhilarated nervousness, a certain sense of trepidation rising in her chest.

* * *

They walked together towards the bus stop, on their way home from the basketball team’s practice session. They were talking animatedly, about the antics of the boys, about what they were like, about the sport and about things Satsuki knew nothing about but suddenly felt very curious of when she was hearing them from his mouth.

The pink-haired girl’s face adopted a wistful expression as her thoughts fled to the afternoon she’d spent with Daiki’s teammates.

He noticed the change, peeking curiously at her.

“What?” he prompted her, genuinely intrigued.

Satsuki sighed, for once not even minding enough the way her breath billowed in white puffs in front of her as they walked.

“It must be really nice. Being part of such a merry group,” she murmured wistfully.

Daiki smirked at her, turning his attention to the ball spinning on his finger.

“I’m sure they’d love to welcome you if you wanted to join,” he told her matter-of-factly. She looked up in surprise at his statement.

“What? I couldn’t possibly—” She started to object, but then changed her argument. “There’s no room for women in  _men’s_ basketball—”

“Sure there is,” Daiki cut her off with an impish grin. “We don’t have a manager, since our last one seems to have graduated last year.” His cerulean orbs were upon her, twinkling with excitement. “However, if you take the position, you’ll have to suffer through all our idiocy, pretty much all the time. It’s not going to be an easy task.”

Her lips fell slightly open, her heart racing at the concept. She could join their team. She could be their manager.

What did a manager  _do_  anyway?

Did it matter?

Whatever it was, she thought she could gladly take that function for them. As long as it meant she could be a part of their merry bunch.

She’d had many girl friends over the years. And she loved them all dearly. But being one of the guys brought with it a certain sense of satisfaction as well.

Guys’ friendships were just…  _different_. In a way she found very compelling. In a way she yearned to be part of, in any shape or form.

She swallowed thickly, the sudden possibility of being able to join them stunning her into silence.

Daiki watched her wrestle with the thought for a while, a knowing little smirk tugging on the corners of his mouth.

“It will be hard work, though. A lot of us need serious discipline to do as we’re told, since we usually can’t be arsed with anything. It will be a trying job to undertake.”

When the look of determination set upon her face, Daiki knew her choice had been made.

He chuckled to himself, pleased.

* * *

As it turned out, the tournament Daiki had mentioned to her was starting just a week from the practice she’d attended.

Much to her surprise, none of the boys seemed to mind the suddenness of her addition to the team. In fact, some of them appeared overjoyed by it. And here she’d believed she was imposing on them. Go figure.

The tournament turned out to be a great success. There were a few nail-biters as far as the matches went, but the Generation of Miracles lived up to their name, carrying the team through with an impressive defeat over the other teams competing.

The boys had made plans to celebrate their victory with a party, and Kise, Daiki and Akashi all insisted that she join them for it, too.

Even if she had considered politely declining, the moment Akashi’s dichromatic eyes set upon her, all intentions of making up excuses not to attend were squashed.

Although she knew them all a bit better now, she was still horribly unnerved by the redheaded boy’s subtly malignant demeanour regardless of what he did.

On their way back from the party towards the bus, Satsuki could feel the sloshing of the alcohol she had ingested in her stomach and in her head. She giggled, somehow endlessly amused by the way she swayed precariously with every other step, the ice under her feet waiting for the perfect chance to strike.

Daiki watched her out of the corner of his eye, a somewhat amused grimace on his face as they trudged on through the snowy lanes.

“You guys are so much fun to party with,” she told him, truthful, with a wistful grin on her face. “I’m so glad you let me meet your friends, Dai-chan.”

She had adopted the mocking pet name from Takao ever after she’d heard it. And although at first Daiki had made a face of disdain whenever he heard it from her, it was entirely different from the severe look of displeasure he’d adopted when she’d called him ‘Aomine-kun’.

To her, it was blatant invitation for her to continue calling him Dai-chan.

Besides, wasn’t it just  _hilarious_  (or was that the alcohol speaking)? Calling an almost two-meter tall bear of a man something so cutesy and  _ridiculous_  like  _Dai-chan_?

Takkun sure came up with ideas of  _pure gold_.

Daiki’s chuckle pulled her out of her reverie, back to the present moment.

“I’m glad you had fun. I guess those freaks do serve a purpose every now and then.”

Satsuki giggled, pushing a hand playfully against his side as they stopped at the waiting spot for the bus.

“How mean, Dai-chan. Your teammates are not your personal entertainers,” she lectured half-heartedly. The effect was lost due to her inability to keep a straight face.

They lapsed into a companionable silence. Satsuki took this chance to gather her bearings a bit better, relying on the cold air to chill her heated cheeks and aid her body with dealing the alcohol in her blood.

When the first snowflake fluttered into her line of vision, she missed it. But when another, and another, and then a dozen more fluttered into her line of sight, she looked up from the pavement. Her head tilted up, the flawless curves of her face getting bathed in the light of the streetlamp overhead, as she gazed to the skies.

“Oh. It’s snowing again.”

She commented upon it without her usual chagrin. Truth be told, the snowflakes falling quietly from the clouds above them only served to lull her deeper into a sense of serenity right at that moment.

Satsuki inhaled deeply through her nose, holding the chilly air in her lungs for a heartbeat before she exhaled it slowly. She marvelled at the puffs of white smoke it turned into upon leaving her body, a small, dreamy smile playing upon her lips as she did so.

In being completely immersed with the feeling of winter around her, she was oblivious to the entranced look on Daiki’s face as he regarded her profile from the side.

His cerulean orbs followed her suit, drinking in the fluidity of her movements.

She made for a captivating vision, her lips red from the drinks they’ve had, her cheeks rosy from the alcohol and the cold. Her button nose usually buried into her warm scarf now pointed skywards as she looked at the snow falling.

The snowflakes drifted down, peppering her long flowing hair, her eyelashes, melting upon landing on her heated plump cheeks.

She let out another small sigh through her pretty little nose, casting her gaze downwards, the light from the streetlamp no longer illuminating the flawlessness of her features.

But it was too late. The enrapturing vision she made for was already committed to Daiki’s memory. It was ingrained in his mind in a way that was beyond his control. Beyond reason.

He had always watched her, ever since that very first day he’d met her on the bus stop.

She hadn’t noticed him, at first, but that was good, because otherwise, she would’ve caught him openly staring at her, an undignified expression on his face.

It wasn’t his fault, though. She was too beautiful, too amazing, for him to be able to keep a straight face in her presence at first.

His interest had been sparked from the moment he laid eyes on her. But ever since he started talking to her he had been irrevocably lost.

And now? Now, his feelings were overflowing, his body taking action of its own in his delirium.

After a couple of minutes, she seemed to become aware of the fact he had fallen completely silent next to her. She turned her face towards him when he took a small step closer, a question on her lips.

It was never voiced aloud, though, because the look in his eyes gave her pause. She stilled completely, eyes opening wider, when she saw him closing the distance between them ever so slowly.

She opened her mouth, a different query bubbling on it, but her words died in her throat when his warm breath ghosted over her cheek.

Instead of saying anything, she leaned closer, closing the gap between them in one languid movement.

His lips compressed against hers, aligning perfectly as he moved them over hers in a slow, timid kiss. She sighed against his mouth, her eyes sliding shut, as her fingers journeyed up to tangle in his hair, keeping his face close as she kissed him back.

It was not her first kiss, nor the best in regards to technique.

But she had thought of this moment, of this simple touch, for days,  _weeks_. She’d yearned to feel how it would be like to press her mouth against his just like this, ever since she’d heard him laugh.

Now that she was finally here, engaged with him in a kiss she’d daydreamed about for so long, the feeling of elation it brought to her being was unlike anything she’d ever experienced.

When his head angled to the side, slanting his mouth against hers, allowing him to dip his tongue into her mouth, she knew what the teasing tug in her gut meant when she pressed her own tongue against the invader.

She’d had an eye on him since before she’d found out he didn’t hate her. She’d found out he wasn’t as gruff or crude or as standoffish as he liked to make himself appear, and that had been the start.

But the moment she’d heard him laugh that day all those weeks ago, she had become his captive.

She knew now, when he kissed her so arduously, so passionately like this, that she had fallen in love with him back then, upon hearing his ringing laughter and seeing the brilliance of his smile.

He had taken her captive, and there was no way out anymore with her acknowledging it at long last.

As his arms wound around her, holding her tight to him, pressing her closer against his body and warmth, Satsuki couldn’t bring herself to mind relinquishing to him.

The kiss Daiki gave her in the cold was not her first, nor was it the best in regards to technique.

It was, however, the best kiss she’d ever received.

It was a promise, a confession, a confiding. It was all the things she couldn’t put into words, all the things she needed without even realizing.

When they parted for air, her eyes opened slowly, burning to memory the expression on Daiki’s face as he still held her tight, his embrace intimate and close. Their laboured breaths came out in thin clouds of white smoke, mixing together and dispersing in the coldness of the air.

She allowed a blasé smile on her face before standing on her tiptoes and pulling him down by the neck into another long, fervent kiss that would steal the air from their lungs.

Satsuki had never been a fan of winter, or the cold.

Yet the kiss Daiki had given her that winter night would stay within her heart as her fondest memory for as long as she may live.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this eons ago (3 years ago, if you want to be exact), yet somehow, it never found its way to my account here. Which is... very odd? I have literally everything from the past 5 years or so uploaded on here, yet there are several stories that I posted only to tumblr. Can't believe myself, but I am up to righting that wrong!
> 
> Here are the initial author notes for this work by yours truly: Frankly, I had the feeling that I had rushed it towards the end, but Maria said she liked it. So I haven’t touched it after that. This is basically what I think KnB would be like if they met a little later in their lives, when they would be more anatomically possible as people playing basketball. xD
> 
> Also: Takao/Aomine friendship gives me life in a way I can't explain to you. GoM+their respective partners from the new schools they went to are just a very delicious prospect I might just look for another opportunity to sink my teeth into.
> 
> ... Or, who knows? Maybe continue this one? *smirks deviously* We'll see about it. xD
> 
> Hope you liked. :3 Comments, constructive critique and support fully welcomed and greatly appreciated.


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